Tonight we did the following. Put a meter between the positive battery post and the positive cable, set to amps. There was no draw at all.

opened the door, the dome light pulled about .6 amps. with the door open and the ignition on we pulled about 1.2 amps.

plugged all the fuses, etc. back in, hooked up the alternator, hooked up the starter, no changes.

With the key off and door closed, we had no draw at all on the battery.

Drove to Auto zombie. they checked the battery at 12.75 volts. did a draw down test, it never got below 11.75 and bouced back to 12.75 when the load came off. With it running the alternator was putting out just over 14 volts, and the battery was taking a charge. There appears to be nothing wrong with the system at all. Guess we'll wait another 3 or 4 days and see if the battery is dead again.

Now for the temp gauge. We repeated the ohms resistance test.

30 ohms resistance the gauge reads about 220 degrees,

at 100 ohms resistance, it reads about 100 degrees.

Same as before. Tested the sending unit with an ohm meter. Cold it was at 170 ohms,

as the water warmed it up the resistance dropped.

at boiling it read about 30 ohms resistance.

Independently they both work and seem to have fairly relative values.

In the car, hooked up, with the temp sender end submerged in cold water, the gauge will climb slowly until it pegs.

As before, if we heat the water, it just pegs faster.

You referenced something I didn't fully understand, but I think
you were reffering to the voltage reducer.

So we put a test light from the power side of the gauge to ground, it lit up, but was pretty weak as it was a12 v light.

As we ran our sending unit tests again we at least got some reading (like 180 degrees on the gauge while the sender was in cold water) but it didn't peg, so I think we are on to something.

you mentioned a 6v instrument regulator. Can you explain?

Also, It may not be relevent, but the gas gauge is hooked up to the same voltage reducer as the temp gauge, and it works fine?

Last edited by docvette; 07-01-2006 at 12:46 AM.
Reason: ease of read...